iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by liz

Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Today I found out that Umberto Eco crafted a version of this meme in the 1980s…

Beware the
alibi of photocopies ! Photocopies are indis-
pensable instruments. They allow you to keep with you a text you have already read in the library, and to take home a text you have not read yet. But a set of photocopies can become an alibi. A student makes hundreds of pages of photocopies and takes them home, and the manual labor he exercises in doing so gives him the impression that he possesses the work. Owning the photocopies exempts the student from actually reading them. This sort of vertigo of accumulation, a neocapitalism of information, happens to many. Defend yourself from this trap: as soon as you have the photocopy, read it and annotate it immediately. If you are not in a great hurry, do not photocopy something new before you own (that is, before you have read and annotated) the previous set of photocopies. There are many things that I do not know because I photocopied a text and then relaxed as if I had read it.

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 7h

oh no, i gotcha! you’re super careful with your language and i wouldn’t read that into your posts at all

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 14h

Scott Walker defunded our strategic cheese curd reserve sadly

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 15h

ahhh that makes sense, i hadn’t seen those interactions! the stuff i read skewed the other way. i’m sorry she was a dick to your friend

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 17h

shouldn’t be too much of a problem, i think. we have access thru a couple computer labs on campus, including one in our building iirc

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 17h

sounds like you’ve got some negotiating to do in your voting bloc, then!

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 17h

if you want to be transgressive please get serious about being materially and not just interpersonally repulsive

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 17h

i’ve always hated the phrase “dirtbag left“ bc i feel it should describe me, a marxist who lives in a cave of taco bell wrappers adhered together with her own filth, and not some unpleasant people who bought microphones

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 17h

going in my folder of responses to “i can’t draw and you won’t let me use AI, can you make me a poster?”

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 17h

i agree with you but with the crucial distinction that this is a random person working thru her feelings online, not a person who has any institutional power in directing discourse. i don’t think she has the structural position to do much harm other than post something annoying.

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 17h

i’m sympathetic, but i think those very associations & non-neutrality of them are central to the point she was struggling with, not a whimsical or unconsidered choice. i read a bunch more of the thread than i’d ever expect from someone who‘s had enough white people talking about slavery tho

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 18h

for this reason i always find brazil/us comparisons extremely useful for clarifying my thinking, even if/when the commonalities aren’t strong. we’re like weird mirror images of each other thru history

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 18h

also if you find her post about ethical consumption under capitalism to be stupid, are you doing much better with the ways in which your lifestyle is propped up by slavery? probably not! it’s a dumb post but get a fucking grip

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 18h

if you want to get mad, send scam altman a fucking email, jesus

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 18h

a random dev online is not anthropic. posting at or about her does not put you on the front lines of the battle for humanity’s soul or whatever you perceive the moral stakes to be, it makes you kind of a dick

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 18h

i said this in the thread, but it’s fucking weird to me to dogpile an everyday person doing what ai critics (like myself!) have demanded: for those who think LLMS are conscious, act accordingly.

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Reposted by liz

Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

It turns out the designer's most important role is to tell you that your taste sucks

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 18h

it’s really neat to see people committing to making a thing well and putting the money back into making the thing well

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 18h

eternal stasis, eternal death

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 18h

yeah i’m not sure why she’s getting dogpiled for doing the exact thing a lot of ai critics have been demanding, she’s committing to the belief in LLM consciousness and struggling with how to act accordingly. and i’m not exactly doing better than her on like, where my food and electronics come from

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 18h

i’ll take ringo thank u

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Reposted by liz

JuliArtWorld @juliartworld.bsky.social · 19h

lil shiba with lil lantern I can’t wait for all the beautiful autumn colors

digital drawing in procreate
a shiba inu laying on a big pot with a red lantern. Above is a japanese maple and behind a torii

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Reposted by liz

🌑 @fell.energy · 19h

more things are art than you might expect

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 18h

check out my new substack, What If All Change Is Bad?

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 18h

his examples of “we’re already in a race to the bottom” are from 2016 and im like. guy. are you aware. of history. it’s happening right now

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 19h

i read the whole thing and there is not any context that’d refute any of his critics

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 19h

tell me more about how you navigate literacy proliferation and/or your go-to resources that you’d rec to a grad student that *aren’t* paulo freire! i’m having trouble navigating all of it, and i am fully exploiting Dr Cottom’s mentions for cross-disciplinary advice ;)

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 19h

that post was so fucking annoying and you said all the things i wanted but smarter and shorter

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 19h

i feel like i can imagine tech hype-bubble cycles pretty well already, actually

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 19h

definitely an inevitable technology that will upend knowledge and work as we know it in ways we can’t yet imagine wait

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 19h

this piece is on my backlog! are there any other articles or essays or writing in general from libraryworld that you’ve found especially fruitful?

muse.jhu.edu

Project MUSE -- Verification required!

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 19h

it would be neat to see if one could lead students thru this thought process in an experiential way over the course of a ~2.5hr seminar. have them read encoding/decoding, set them to interrogate an Altman press engagement & a LLM-sourced text, and discuss their *experiences* of doing the analysis

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 19h

thank you!!! for context for all my questions, i’m working out a definition of “digital literacy” that‘s specific enough to use as a tool to guide curriculum development & research proposals for the program i teach for (“digital arts and culture”). AI takes up all the air in the room.

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 19h

this is a good distinction too!

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 19h

thank you for enabling my ravenous hunger for citations!

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 19h

this is a really nice distinction imo

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 19h

okay gotcha, i‘m following you better now, i think! those last two sentences help me get a better handle on your framing.

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 20h

your ability to make that observation is a product of v advanced and long practice of media literacy tho, no? like media literacy should at least help students frame the problem and realize “ai literacy” is meaningless?

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 20h

individual coders care a LOT about quality tho, or at least the best ones i’ve worked with! it’s been a useful lever for helpin coders develop class consciousness

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 20h

it‘s such a consistent attitude among coders tho, and seems agnostic of their training/early socialization into the profession. i want to attack that problem in thru education (both formal in-classroom higher ed stuff and on-the-job “trainings” we all love) but idk precisely where it comes from yet

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 20h

thinking thru your posts reminds me this one; if we think of AI as a rhetorical technology (its purpose is not to produce anything, its purpose is to justify & naturalize organization of society; you don’t read AI, it reads you) then media literacy should be the weapon of choice, i think?

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 20h

i’ve spent my whole stupid life arguing with these dipshit freaks online and i’m so tired of them and i want them to collectively fall into an open sewer

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 20h

oh d’oh, of course!

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 20h

i’m curious too! my first reaction on first reading it was disappointment, bc i already practice a lot of what they recommend, and i want *more* things i can do to make myself less miserable online. but i really liked the notion of making proactive decisions about what you pay attention to.

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 20h

similar to where i’m landing, i think—maybe not different skills, but a different mode of engaging with the world and knowing when you need to read antagonistically

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 20h

omg i highly recommend picking up The Stars Are Legion without knowing anything about it other than it’s about a biological generation ship and it’s very gross

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 20h

just bought tix to see this tomorrow and i’m so exciteddddd

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 20h

lissa. lissa i hate them SO much

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liz @bookjanitor.bsky.social · 20h

for body horror in space i assume you’re all over kameron hurley already, right?

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